Editorial: In a month from now …

Every EU citizen can vote in the Danish part of the European election on May 25. You can actually do it now by post.

For those who don’t want to go to the ballot, citizen service centres are open for advance voting business.

And from next week you can even ask for help to vote from your home if you are bedridden or otherwise unable to go to the polling station.

You can choose to vote in Denmark or participate in your EU homeland, but you can only vote in one country. If you want to vote in Denmark and you were already registered to vote in 2009, you will receive a voting card some days before election day – if not, you will have to enrol as a voter now. See the guidelines here: elections.oim.dk/european-parliament-elections.

Denmark can elect 13 members out of 751. The last election attracted less than 50 percent of voters to the polling stations – about 1.8 million. We believe that there are more than 150,000 EU expats in Denmark eligible to vote, but we do not know how many vote in their homelands.

However, even if you are somewhat late to register as a candidate, we find it interesting that expats, if they consolidated their votes, could theoretically elect at least one, if not two members of the European Parliament from the Danish quota.

We believe however that expats are just as diverse as the Danish population at large, so it is expected that expats will cast their votes across the political spectrum.

It is of course a vision, but not a vision alone, that over time we will see a growing electorate of expats making their voices heard across Europe and wielding more than 10 percent of votes and electing more than 10 percent of the members – that is about 70 out of 751.

In times where we see growing nationalism and exclusion instead of integration in the European family, we strongly urge you to vote – vote according to your taste and conviction, but vote. And free us from watching a regression when what we need is more solidarity.

It does not come easily, but where would our eastern European friends be today if not in the EU, and think how most Ukrainians today wish they were already here.

By the way, on May 25 there is also a referendum about the EU Patent treaty. But that is for voters with Danish citizenship only, so …

POSTSCRIPT:

Last week we recommended our EU Citizen readership to participate in the upcoming EU election in Denmark or in their respective homelands.

However, if one is not listed on the electorate record in Denmark, one should have applied for this before April 22.

We failed to stress that fact in our editorial published on April 26. To the extent that has caused inconvenience to anybody trying to enlist, we regret that deeply, not withstanding the fact that it would have been too late for this election anyway.